


the accomplice

by arbitrarily



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-23
Updated: 2011-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-22 23:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>two brothers go to war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the accomplice

Here is a story for you:

Two brothers, and one pushes the other as they race down a darkened hall. The boy falls -- he skids first, and then he falls -- and he rips the knee of his trousers open on a raised nail embedded in a rotted floorboard. The boy bleeds and his brother keeps running, his pace thunderous, but he pauses, just before the wall in front of him (the vase of China lilies on the end table and the family portrait above, the bodies behind the glass move muddied and slow, their faces disapproving and foreign).

He turns to his brother and calls to him. The boy rises from his knees and leaves his blood on the ground, on the nail, on the palms of his hands.

He runs to his brother, but he’s not fast enough and at the end of the hall all that waits is an end table. A vase of China lilies. Faces disapproving and foreign.

His knee stings.

 

 

 

Here is another story 

(less blood this time, less blood at the surface, less spilled, dried to rust, but in a story about brothers, blood is all that matters):

 _Deux frères_ , and their mother is French, their father was raised in Lyon, but they are sent to a British school. First one boy leaves, and then another. But first one leaves.

The other is left alone. There is no one to chase after, and no one to race, but he runs all the same.

Past the end table. Past the China lilies. Past the unfamiliar faces.

He does not stumble when he is alone, but he does not know where to run. He chooses circles. The boy runs in circles, and his brother never writes him letters.

He joins him five years later, the two brothers,  _deux frères_ , but one half has grown, the other stuck in circles he created.

The older brother laughs; the dungeons of their school stretch serpentine yet familiar. The younger clamors after him.

 

 

 

A final story:

Two boys, not quite men, and a woman situates herself between. Two boys, one almost a man, disapproving and foreign, while the other waits at the end of a long hall.

They grow, the woman a fulcrum between as they find the delicate balance between masculinity and depravity, cruelty and control. A knife wields easy in hand. The bodies move muddied and slow. Blood spills black in the dark. The two brothers cloak themselves in black. They follow the woman in black.

Neither boy bleeds. Their pace is thunderous.

One pushes the other. Neither brother bleeds.

 


End file.
